Atlas Physical Therapy
August 2017
Monthly
YOUR PT NEWSLETTER
A Gold-Medal Method The Olympics and Physical Therapy
Boxing was one of the earliest Olympic sports, and it’s still a huge part of the games. The Olympics may have begun with a simple footrace, but it quickly expanded to 20 events. If you look at a list of the oldest events — javelin, discus, boxing, wrestling, and long jump, among others — you’ll quickly notice that many of them are based on functional movements that spectators would easily relate to. I think that’s why the 100-yard dash still holds a special place in the Olympics. Everyone understands what it feels like to run, and everyone can appreciate just how fast the world’s best sprinters can cover the distance. If you break down a lot of sports, you can reduce them to a few functional movements: running, jumping, and lateral motion. These aren’t just the building blocks from which exceptional athletes perform feats most of us can only dream of, they are also the foundation for many everyday tasks. That’s part of the reason why physical
You only need to turn on the TV for a second to realize how central athletics are to our culture. It’s not just that way here in America, but everywhere in the world — and it’s not a recent development. Sporting history is nearly as long as human history, and one of the longest athletic traditions dates back to Ancient Greece. I’m talking, of course, about the Olympic Games, which date all the way back to 776 B.C. I grew up in Rhodes, where we had our own Olympic hero: Diagoras. In fact, he is so synonymous with the place that he’s become known as Diagoras of Rhodes, and both our airport and a local soccer team are named after him. To give you a sense of just how famous he is there, I would say it’s comparable to how beloved Derek Jeter is around here. Diagoras was a boxer who was famed for his superhuman feats of strength. His children and grandchildren were also known for their prowess in the ring.
therapy is so beneficial for both athletes and mere mortals like you and me. By replicating motions that you execute in your daily life, physical therapy provides real benefits to your quality of life. Our goal is to strengthen your body when you’re in the office, so that you don’t have to worry about pain outside of it. There’s no magic to what we do, just science and some hard work. The human body is miraculous, as Olympians demonstrate better than anyone, and learning how it functions can open doors for you. Now, I can’t turn you into a world-class sprinter, and anyone who says they can should go win a gold medal. But what I can do is help educate you about some of the body’s most essential movements and give you the tools to live a pain-free life.
1 www.AtlasPhysicalTherapyNJ.com • 973-325-7212 – Sam Dimitrakis
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